One question I have about project cars is this: do you ever get to a point, age-wise, where you simply don’t want to take on a car ready for restoration? I’ll explain more later, but you start to ask yourself whether restoration is a young man’s game, either due to having more time, patience, and likely, both. This 1974 Porsche 911 Targa was apparently removed from storage in the Los Angeles area, and while it has a fair amount of sun damage, it looks absolutely rust-free and unmodified. You’ll find this 911 listed here on eBay with an asking price of $29,500 or best offer.

This is a funny color: up top, it clearly looks brown; down here, with the sun hitting the faded body panels, it looks an awful lot like Bamboo Beige. Of course, it could have been repainted, and while the 1970s was an era often associated with tans and browns and  chocloates, cars were often resprayed as preferences shifted towards your conventional reds and blacks. This one was likely resprayed in either a factory color or a cheaper batch of paint that was close to original, and you can see a photo of the hood shows two layers of paint behind the Porsche crest badge. Regardless, it’s amazing a color like this that went out of style in a big way was retained through the years as this simply became a cheap sports car.

The interior shows sun damage on the seats but incredibly, the dash doesn’t appear to be cracked. The other details you notice in the listing is the targa panel which literally has sunlight poking through it, which again suggests that this 911 sat outside for a few years but that doesn’t explain the uncracked dash. Regardless, you have to be a fan of tan and its relatives to enjoy this car, and since the door jams show similar shades suggesting it may still wear factory paint in places, I would plan on keeping the colors pretty close to what they are now when the inevitable respray happens. The good news is that if it is Bamboo Beige, this is one of the rarer factory colors offered in this era if air-cooled 911s.

The 2.7 flat-six engine in the 911 at this point in its history was not overly powerful, clocking in at 150 horsepower. Getting into a later 911 SC makes more sense to me if you’re interested in better performance for similar money, and the asking price may not be dramatically different for an example in similar “project car” state. To my earlier point: I’ve grown weary of having to do the mental gymnastics of tracking down new parts or scouring junk yards for good used pieces, so while a car like this always catches my eye for the potential of being the one to bring it back, reality has been setting in lately and making me look for vehicles that cost more but are closer to being turnkey. Do you still have gas in the tank for a restoration project like this 911?